The impacts of atmospheric radiation on studies of planetary habitability

The conditions required for Earth-like life to emerge on a planet are thought to include the presence of liquid water, the availability of energy, the existence of organic material, and shielding from high energy charged particles. There are situations when determining whether these conditions exist on a planetary body is not possible without a detailed understanding of the radiative processes occurring in a planet’s atmosphere. In this work, studies of the radiative flux and transfer within planetary atmospheres are carried out in order to elucidate whether certain planetary bodies may be habitable. The first section of this work quantifies the impinging X-ray flux on sub-Neptune sized planets in the Kepler spacecraft dataset. This study determines the conditions for such planets to be stripped of their primordial atmospheres, with implications for the stability of liquid water on their surfaces. In the second part, the absorption of light in the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon Titan is modeled in order to understand how close to the surface one has to be to detect organic molecules of prebiotic relevance, including amino acids and nucleobases.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Georgia Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• McDonald, George D.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wray, James J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Simon, Sven
• Sokolik, Irina
• Steffes, Paul
• Lopez, Eric D.

• Planetary science
• Atmospheric science
• Radiative transfer
• Astronomy
• Exoplanets
• Titan

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1853/60297

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.gatech.edu:1853/60297